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Throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century there was a widely publicized controversy involving two great mathematicians the German Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz and Englishmen Sir Issac Newton For over a century England and Germany argued over which homesung hero had indeed discovered calculus What both nations refused to admit however was that niether of the two thinkers truly invented calculus For the act of discovering or inventing anything is a pain-staking process that an indivdiual inventor does not complete on his own Both men simply made advancements in the field of Mathematics that would not have been found without the intial findings of the egyptians Archimdees and Euclid among others Ultimately there is no use pondering the question of whom discovered caluclus for that has no clear answer Rather it is more significant to look at the pathetic decline in English Mathematics as a result of an entire stubborn generation of Mathematicians attempting to prove Newtons legacy In order to get the full impact of the ridiclousness of the controversy one must take a indepth look at the scenerio surrounding it Unaware that Newton was reported to have discovered similar methods Leibniz discovered his calculus in Paris between 1673 and 1676 Ball 1908 By 1676 Leibniz realized that he was onto something big he just didnt realize that Newton was on to the same big discovery because Newton was withholding information Newtons inability to get his information out to the public at this time proves to be the major spark to the controversy Leibniz published the first account of differential calculus in 1684 and then published the explanation of integral calculus in 1686 Boyer 1968 Newton did not publish his findings until 1687 Yet evidence shows that Newton discovered his theories of fluxional calculus in 1665 and 1666 after having studied the work of other mathematicians such as Barrows and Wallis Struik 1948 Evidence also shows that Newton was the first to

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